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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Remember my Hunter gear? Well boys and girls, a few pieces of that equipment are history because these past two days I made some significant upgrades to it. That was thanks to a good tip in the comments on one of my posts from someone who drew my attention to an awesome site that I had no idea about: maxdps.com.

What's cool about this site is that you can specify which equipment sources you want to filter by (for example a solo player like myself might want to only show items obtained from crafting, reputation rewards and BoE). Then it shows you all the available equipment broken down by slot and sorted in decreasing order of DPS. It's very easy to figure out what upgrades you can get and which ones are worth it. The only flaw that I noticed is that it seems to be missing some items. For example I didn't see my Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets in the list.

Anyhoo, thanks to that list, here are the upgrades that I made.

Eaglebane Bracers (ilvl 187) -> Bracers of the Smothering Inferno (ilvl 219). I spotted these epic bracers in the AH for 900 gold and snatched them right away. I don't even know if it's a good price as I've never seen them before but it doesn't seem like a bad bargain. Wowhead shows a price of over 2000 gold.

In all, the DPS displayed under my character jumped over 100 points which is incredible as far as I'm concerned even though by raid standards I'm probably pathetic. Now I just have to replace those trinkets...

21 comments:

Tox
said...

Hi,

For a trinket, you could look at Darkmoon Card: Death, which you receive when you turn in the Undeath Deck. It should be easier for you since you have a scribe. I bought it for 650g on Area 52 server. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42990

I know you're a solo player and dislike 5-mans and heroics, but... Trial of the Champion takes only 20-30 minutes with a decent group, there is no trash, only bosses, just one room (an arena), and the loot is awesome if you don't go 10 or 25-mans. I really recommend checking out this new instance!

Why swear and be rude and/or racist? There's absolutely no need for that. If you don't like the blog then don't read it, nobody is forcing you. The author clearly put effort into writing a post good enough to read - else neither you nor I would have read it and commented - and you ought to respect that.

Instead of being abusive, what you could have done instead is recommend (ways to get) better gear so he can improve further, such as Celebrandil has. At least be constructive.

You don't need any kind of rep requirement for ToC, Darth. Just hop in with a pug and you're set. I have yet to pick up anything good (nothing but cloth dropped), but it's really quick once you get a group going. First time, you'll be saying to yourself: "Oh, that's it?"Do it on reg and you can do it over and over again.

Confirmed that there is no prerequisite for ToC. Though the first fight is a joust, so if you havent' done any Argent Tourney you may flail about ineffectively...er, like I do.

The second time I ran it THREE epic mail itmes dropped, all of which were significant upgrades for me. Granted that was a super-lucky run, but stil you will be amazed at the stuff you haul out of that place. And as said before, it's pretty easy...

First off - your original posting of hunter gear inspired me so much that all my effort since hitting 80 has been acquiring these amazing items!

I actually ran some ToC stuff and picked up some pretty awesome items after a few runs, including a gun that beats the engineering crafted one, but since this is all about doing it solo, I won't list the stuff I dug up.

Second - I know people have talked about using the two darkmoon cards you mentioned - death and greatness. I see they have bonuses that might be better than the trinkets from the Oracles..... but I'm reluctant to trade "up" for them. I found the mana restoration provided by using two trinkets has effectively removed my ability to run out of mana when fighting normal mobs 72-80 in level. With all the gear you suggested giving me a nifty DPS and crit, I only need to fire off 1 or two rotations, killing the mob and giving me 1000 mana or so!

Anyone else have good luck with that? Is it worth giving up for better stat bonuses? (Or should I just swap them in and out when I'm fighting elites or low level farming?)

Don't buy both cards, it's a waste of money. Just get either Death or Greatness (which still costs >4k on my server) and keep your Oracles trinket. Furthermore I believe if you would have both cards equipped, they would share the same cooldown, so the overall proc rate would not increase. The proc is what contributes to their awesomeness.

Also if you find a good group, you can farm REG TOC over and over, which has a few nice item level 200 pieces, but the good polearm is for heroic. Reg TOC has nice boots, belt, bracers, shoulders and chest for a hunter

@Shawn that's good. I think I'll give it a try. I do enjoy a good group occasionally but since I'm not in a guild with other people it's hard for me to run regular dungeons/raids, especially since I don't know the fights and even PUGs would hate me.

@Jarnow wow lucky! Now if I run ToC I will start regretting having spent all that gold on upgrades... If I get some good drops that is.

@Lorfallis thanks man! It really warms me up to hear that you are enjoying my blog :) Me, I don't even have the Oracles trinkets.

@Celebrandil I already have the Undeath deck and I might just buy the Greatness one. After all, I spent nearly 20K for those 2 Kirin Tor rings lol. What's 4-5K extra?

@Anonymous good idea on the shot rotation man. I've saved a draft and will start working on it soon. I'm not sure how ideal my rotation will seem but for me it works.

@Davinfelth I heard that the one problem with ToC is that very long cutscene at the beginning. Will have to try it though.

Oh! So I did a bit of grinding tonight and checked my combat log - you can gain mana from 2 oracles trinkets if you have it equipped. For me that's 554 mana per trinket on a non-grey kill. Mmmm daily quests go so quickly now :-D

It's not the money that should keep you from buying both Darkmoon trinkets. I'm 99% sure that only one of the cards can proc, and the proc is what makes the trinkets so sexy. So if I am not mistaken, one card will always keep the other from going off. You can never have two procs of the same kind at the same time. So it really doesn't make sense to buy both trinkets, because all it gives you is +90 agility, which is nice but there are other trinkets out there that come close. And the Greatness trinket is really made for long fights because it pushes your overall DPS significantly. Keep in mind it depends on a proc rate, you cannot fire it on your own. Get the Death card for a nice stat boost and the occasional burst damage, and the Greatness card if you are going heroics, 10 or 25mans. That's where it really pays off. ;-)

One other site worth looking at for gear upgrades is Lootrank. You can filter it, similar to maxdps, but the thing that I like about it is that you can make your own adjustments to the stat weightings. (For example, if you tend to solo a lot..not sure why I would think that...you might want to more heavily emphasize stamina for survival than a pure raid-based dps spec would). There are a few "template" stat weightings available on the site and on their forums, but you can tweak them and filter them to your hearts content.

Hey, nows the time to do ToC runs and H-ToC runs, since everyone is doing them, it should be easy to find a group.

Also, as a hunter, a lot of the dangers of this instance (whirlwind, poison, etc..) will be non-issues for you. Should be much easier for you than it was for me as a rogue. Try out the regular ToC to learn it and get some upgrades then jump right into H-ToC and get even more.

As for ToC, I'm definitely planning on trying it. I found myself in Icecrown several times while people were looking for a DPS for regular but unfortunately it was bad timing for me. I need to be sure that I can commit to a group before I join.

This is cool a hunter is like a class that always have a companion, having pet is like having a dog you try to feed them, care for them and rely on them. They even fight with you. With the special skills that a hunter have like traps, aspects and hunter's mark no wonder why the hunter is always one of the top pick when leveling up.

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Former WoW player, current Diablo 3 fanatic, I love the finer things in life such as PC games, beer and computers. While playing a good game is a spiritual experience, blogging about it is almost equally rewarding.